This month the Daring Bakers kept our creativity rolling with cinnamon bun inspired treats. Shelley from C Mom Cook dared us to create our own dough and fill it with any filling we wanted to craft tasty rolled treats, cinnamon not required!
Tell me, where has this month gone? How did it get to be the end of June all of a sudden? I swear, the last time I checked, it was the beginning of May, I was starting a new job (yay!), and this had just happened:
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Sometimes you just need a platter full of vegetables and some garlicky hummus to dip them in. It’s been ages since I last made hummus, and I’ve been wanting to try Smitten Kitchen’s secret to making “ethereally smooth hummus“. But I think I was also putting it off, because the thing is, the secret is kind of ridiculous and crazy-making: you have to peel the chickpeas, and that seems like a totally insane thing to do.
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I was Stumbling around the web today and I came across Dr. Andrew Weil’s website – specifically, his Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid, which piqued my interest. His position on food and health is that some foods promote an inflammatory response in the body, while others are anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is a natural process by which the body heals itself, however prolonged inflammation (think heat, swelling, redness, etc) can be harmful, and eating anti-inflammatory foods helps to reduce inflammation and promote better health. Whether or not you subscribe to this way of thinking, I like the food pyramid he sets out, and I also like his dietary recommendations. He talks about “diet” in the same way that I like to think about it: not as a quick fix way to lose weight by eating only grapefruit or cabbage soup, but the daily practice of choosing what to eat to make your body healthy – looking at food as something good for you, rather than as something bad that you need to deprive yourself of. Ultimately, we need calories from food to live, and making healthy choices to get the most out of those calories (health-wise and enjoyment-wise!) is the best way to do that. Also, I like that chocolate is right at the top of the pyramid 😉
Anyway, enough preaching about that. This article gives the dietary recommendations that go along with the pyramid.
While browsing his website, I also came across these two lists: produce that can be bought conventionally grown because it does not carry a large pesticide load, and produce that should always be bought organic (when possible) because it does carry a large pesticide load.
Foods you don’t have to buy organic, aka the Clean 15:
(Assuming that the produce is washed)
Foods you should always buy organic, aka the Dirty Dozen:
Looking at this list, I need to start making some more organically-minded choices at the grocery store.
I’m reading David Suzuki’s Sacred Balance right now, and in it he talks about how the pesticide and toxin loads that humans carry in their bodies are on the rise – ironically, they are highest in the least industrialized areas of the world, for various reasons (I recommend reading the book if you are interested in knowing why!). We dump pollutants into the natural environment pretty indiscriminately, and it is only a matter of time before it comes back at us. While the trace amounts of toxins and pesticides in our food might not seem like a big deal, humans are at the top of the food chain, so those small amounts of toxins concentrate in our bodies – pretty nasty. Limiting that toxic concentration is a good argument for making organic choices when buying from the Dirty Dozen list! Again, I think it comes down to choosing your diet: balancing food choices that will make you healthy and happy.
(I know I haven’t mentioned it here, but I also think that buying locally and ethically is just as important as buying organic (and sometimes more!), not only for our personal health but for the health of our communities and the planet. However the links between organic, local, and ethical food are fascinating and complex, and that’s a kettle of fish to be saved for another post!)
I made some fantastic “Healthy Cookies” from 101 Cookbooks, a food blog that features whole, healthy foods, delicious recipes, and an emphasis on alternative sweeteners rather than refined sugar. This cookie recipe calls for coconut oil, which might send up red flags for some people because it is a saturated fat, but it is from a plant-source rather than an animal-source, and therefore acts differently in the body (ie, not as harmful). My take on it is this: in tropical cultures that eat a traditional diet high in saturated fats from plants, such as coconut oil, there is a very low incidence of “Western diseases” (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc). Mother Nature knows her stuff, and coconut oil is a naturally-occurring saturated fat – that is, not tampered with to make a liquid fat stay solid at room temperature (like margarine) – and therefore I’m inclined to think that it’s not going to do me any harm in moderation, kind of the same stance I have on butter. But if you’re worried, you can substitute olive oil for the coconut oil – just make sure it is mild or neutral-flavoured.
I also used sugar-free chocolate chips (sweetened with maltitol, which interestingly has almost the same chemical properties as refined sugar, but doesn’t mess with blood sugar levels as much AND as a bonus doesn’t promote tooth decay!) and added some ground flax seeds to the dough. The bananas can easily be substituted for applesauce or any other fruit puree (you don’t actually taste the banana, it just lends sweetness), and the chocolate chips for dried fruit (if, for example, you wanted to make breakfast cookies, Lynette!). These are super delicious and not too sweet, with kind of a macaroon-like texture. I think I ate about four in a row when they first came out of the oven, which kind of negates the “healthy” part, but oh well!
(adapted slightly from the original recipe at 101 Cookbooks)
3 large, ripe bananas (the ones you would use for banana bread), well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, barely warm – so it isn’t solid (or alternately, neutral-flavoured olive oil)
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal (aka ground almonds)
1/3 cup coconut, finely shredded & unsweetened
2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350Ëš F. Mix together bananas, vanilla, and oil, then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Drop by teaspoonfuls (you may need to squish the dough together a bit, as it is fairly loose) onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes (as long as possible without burning the bottoms). These are quite crumbly when warm! Let cool and store in an airtight container.